Unexpected
by Kat Silver
Summary: In which John has a nightmare and Sherlock plays the violin, among other things.
1. Unexpected

_Violin music floats out over the sand, in the darkness and over the shouts of the soldiers trying to take cover. I'm fingerspalmswristselbows deep in a boy (so young, when did they become so young?) trying to keep his entrails from becoming his extrails. Isn't that a line from a movie? Something about knights and lying and the hero getting the girl. _

_A glissando of notes cuts between the screams, under the curses and behind the deep reports of gunfire. The heart under my hands (quite literally under my hands) flutters and stills, and there's nothing I can do. Everything gets quieter for a moment as I run through my options, which are limited out here in the middle of all this._

_Yelling and violin music through the night. No, that's not quite right. I'm yelling, but my voice isn't heard but I can hear it but no one around me does but that can't be right, someone always hears me, hears the doctor. The lieutenant's right there, he should be able hear me. _

_Curling through it all, reaching a crescendo just as I feel a searing pain through my left shoulder. The song reaches its culmination and_ I jerk awake, disoriented, flailing against the things holding me down (sheets, blankets). The song continues, though, skewing dream into reality. I find myself free of the blankets and across the room through the door down the steps into the sitting room, where there is air and peace and music.

Right. New flat, new flatmate.

Sherlock lifts his bow and the music stops. I've stopped just inside the doorway, gasping for breath. I can feel my hand shaking (nothing unusual there) but my leg is steady.

"Did I wake you?" Sherlock asks. I try to reply, but my mouth is desert dry. "I told you I play violin when..."

"It's fine," I say, cutting him off. "You didn't wake me."

"You had a nightmare," he says, looking me up and down. Christ, I'm in a t-shirt and shorts, no robe, scar faintly visible through the shirt. I fought the urge to cover it with my right hand. He'd already noticed it, anyway.

"It happens," I reply, realising that I had been silent for too long. "I'm sorry to disturb you, I'll go back." I motioned up to my room, starting to turn.

"You're not disturbing me," he says. "Stay, if you want." He doesn't ask what the nightmare was about. He can probably guess (deduce, he'd correct me) what it was, probably heard me flailing around my room. Unfamiliar surroundings, new noises, new flatmate. "Do you need me to do anything?"

I feel bad asking. I feel foolish for wanting. But I'm so grateful that he offered I can hardly stand it.

"Can you play?" I ask. "Play some more, I mean? Please? Anything, anything at all."

He looks surprised. "Of course," he replies, lifting the bow again.

I drift into the kitchen to make tea as soft, slow notes start from the violin. The familiar motions are soothing, and I carry two cups back to the sitting room.

Sherlock's in the middle of the floor, so I place one cup on the mantle and take mine to the coffee table near the sofa. There's a blanket crammed at one end, and I pull it over my legs as the music continues.

By the time Sherlock's played two songs and my tea is gone, I've stopped shaking. He ends a third song, something slow that's making my eyelids droop, and puts his violin away. I know I should get up, go back to my bed, and leave him to whatever he does when he's not sleeping, but I'm too comfortable to move. It's that quiet time of night where nothing feels quite real, when the whole world is still.

He sits down on the other end of the sofa, and I tense involuntarily. Oh, God, here it comes, the talk about the nightmares, their subjects, about the things I don't (won't) even tell my therapist.

He wraps one hand gently around my shoulder and pulls my head into his lap.

"You're not able fall asleep while I play," he says, his voice low, a rumble I can damn near feel, this close to him. He's right.

"What makes you think I'll fall asleep like this?" I ask, and then his fingers are brushing through my hair.

"You like touch," Sherlock replies. "You don't mind it, at any rate; you're the first to offer your hand to shake when you meet someone new. Touch is comforting to you."

"I didn't think you would," I say. "Thought it might fall under that whole 'not my area' thing." That was rude. Damn.

But his hand doesn't stop. "This doesn't," he says. "You don't. You are surprising, John, new."

"Ah, so you don't have all of humanity figured out," I say, surprising a soft chuckle out of him.

"It seems not," he says. "Is this okay?"

"It's fine," I say. "It's more than fine." I'd like to actually be lying beside him. Would he do that?

As if he'd read my mind, he says, "My bed's more comfortable than here." I look up at him, dislodging his hand. "Nothing like that, John, I just know that company helps with nightmares."

"All right," I say, after thinking about it. He sounded like he had been speaking from experience. I couldn't help but wonder how he knew. "I may hit you, though. If I have another nightmare, I mean. You don't have to do this. And don't try to hold me down or wake me up." I sit up, pushing the blanket back down.

"I'll be fine," he replies, pulling me up and leading me to his room. "We both need to sleep."

It feels strangely intimate to climb into his bed, but it's Sherlock. My life hasn't been normal since I met him (what was it, now, a week ago?). Chasing cabs, shooting serial killers, nightmares from my own subconscious. Climbing into his bed. These are the things that are strange and yet somehow normal.

I start to lay with my back to him, but he tugs my shoulder until I turn over, and then starts carding his fingers through my hair again, slowly, lightly. I relax quickly, lulled both by his presence and the feel of his fingers in my hair.

"Thank you," I say, catching his hand and placing a kiss on the palm. His fingers stiffen just a little in surprise, and then stroke once down my cheek before winding back into my hair. It's the last thing I remember before falling into sleep.


	2. This is Us

**II**

Noise. Motion.

Another body next to me.

_Get moving._

I'm out of bed and two steps away before I manage to stop myself. I'm not in my room; I'm in Sherlock's. Sherlock. Flatmate. Plays violin. Deduces people. (Right old arse, sometimes.) Calmed me until I fell asleep last night.

I turn around.

"Good morning," he says, watching me from where he's sitting up on the bed. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah," I reply. "Yeah, I did." I swallow, suddenly nervous. "Thank you for last night."

He waves a hand, as if dismissing my gratitude. "You were distressed, I calmed you down."

Is that all it was?

"Right," I say, and turn on my heel to go shower.

"You're welcome, John," he says to my back before I've even take two steps. "That's the response you wanted, right? 'You're welcome?' Or I could have said, 'It was no problem,' because it wasn't." I turn back around, surprised. "This isn't my area, John, I told you that. I don't know what the etiquette is for this."

"I don't quite know either," I admit. Here, in the light of day, I feel kind of ashamed about last night. They were just nightmares. I'm a grown man.

"You were startled when you realised there was someone else with you in bed," Sherlock observes, watching me. "But you're calm now."

"Getting there, at any rate," I say. "It's been...awhile since I've had someone else in bed with me."

"I didn't mean to startle you," he replies.

"I know." I did. I know he didn't mean to. It wasn't his fault, it was mine. Is mine. "Breakfast?" He nods, and I turn and leave.

The day passes in a haze of drowsy laziness. Neither of us had gotten much sleep, and although Sherlock seemed to able function completely on tea and nicotine patches, he seems rather content to watch television on the couch with me.

With his head in my lap.

We are midway through the second movie when I find my hand running through his hair, much the same as he had done to me last night.

"Sorry," I mutter, pulling my hand away.

"Don't," Sherlock says, grabbing my wrist before I can pull it away. He places it back on his head. I tentatively start stroking again. He... _nuzzles _(there is no other word for it) into my hand and then rests his head more firmly on my thigh.

"What is this, Sherlock?" I ask later, after lunch when we're back on the couch, his head in my lap again. He is staring at the ceiling with his hands folded under his chin, ignoring the television.

"This is us, John," he replies.

"All right," I say, and stroke through his curls again.

That night, I go to my own bed later than I normally do, alone. I can hear Sherlock downstairs, doing something in the kitchen, and then faint music from his laptop. I fall asleep to the soft noises.

_I've got blood up to my wrists. It's a boy, this time an actual boy, a local child who couldn't be more than fifteen and who had been caught in the crossfire and taken shrapnel to his back. He's barely breathing, and we're exposed. I pick him up gently and get us behind a mostly-whole wall of a nearby house. He's muttering something, breathless, his voice breaking, and I catch the words for mother and sister, but everything else is blurred out._

_His voice grows softer and then, all of a sudden, he's gone. _

"_John!" someone's calling, and someone grabs my_ shoulder and I lash out instinctively. "John, let me go."

Calm voice, cool, deep, authoritative. Called me by my first name. I'm holding a wrist, attached to the arm that is twisted up behind the back of my flatmate. Who is pushed against the wall.

I'm holding him there.

"I'm sorry," I say, immediately letting go. I look at my own hands, the afterimages of the boy's blood coating my hands ghosting in front of me. I blink and the image fades and I put my hands resolutely behind my back. "Did I hurt you?"

"No," Sherlock says, but I can see the red mark my hand made around his wrist. He follows my gaze and pulls the cuff of his shirt over it. "I'm all right. Lestrade called."

"What's he want? What time is it?"

"It's half seven. They've found a body near the Thames, by Tower Bridge. Come on," he replies, heading for my bedroom door. "He wants us to meet him at the morgue."

I have just enough time for tea and toast before I'm following Sherlock out the door and we're on our way.

"I've got to get back to the scene, call me with what you find," Lestrade says as we pass him in the corridor heading for the morgue. "Apparently they've found another body."

The body is a boy, no older than fifteen, and his back has been sliced open. I can see his spinal cord from where I'm standing at the doorway. I remember the dream, the blood on my hands, and gasp.

"Yes, Molly, coffee would be lovely," Sherlock says. Molly moves past me, and Sherlock looks up at me. I'm frozen in place.

"John," he says, and he's in front of me, stooping to look me in the eye. He's grasped my hands, which I'd raised to look at, intertwining his fingers with my own. His fingers are long, bony. "John."

"What?" I reply, finally finding my own voice. Jesus, they're just nightmares. It's daytime, this is London. (But the boy is so young.)

"Look at me," Sherlock commands, and I do, tearing my eyes away from the prone figure lying face down on the table. "You're safe."

"I am not a child," I say, surprised at the vehemence in my own voice. He pushes our linked hands down but doesn't relinquish my fingers.

"I never said you were, John," he replies. "You're not weak, either. What is it about this particular body?"

I swallow around a suddenly dry throat. He waits, more patient than I've ever seen him, for me to answer him. "The wounds," I finally manage. "There was a boy who died in my arms. I could see his spine." Bones aren't white in a live body.

Sherlock studies my face. I have no idea what he's seeing and I frankly don't care. But I feel steadier, watching him examine me, anchored by our linked hands.

"Molly's coming," he says suddenly, and lets me go. He tugs on my shoulder, dragging me over to the body. I'm not panicked anymore, and I study the wounds.

"Most of these were accidental," I say.

"How can you tell?" Sherlock asks. He knows. He just wants to hear me go through it.

"They're too random, too jagged. The biggest wound," I say, indicating the one along the boy's spine, "is deliberate. A knife or scalpel."

"Good," Sherlock says, and Molly opens the door to see us both bending over the body.

"Find anything?" she asks, setting the coffees on a table, well away from everything else.

"Quite a lot," Sherlock replies. He picks up both coffees and hands one to me. I look askance at Molly, who nods that the coffee is for me. Sherlock taps out something on his phone as I sip. His phone starts dinging madly, a cacophony of different text tones. He grins and grabs my arm, towing me out.

We're back on the street before I quite realise what's going on. Sherlock is on the phone with Lestrade, saying something about black market organ harvesting and a recent kidnapping. He gives an address to Lestrade, telling him to look there.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"We are going home," he replies. "This was barely worth my time." He's frustrated.

"How'd you know?" Organ harvesting? Really? Did that sort of thing still happen?

"The boy's kidneys were missing. It was very clumsily done, and the other wounds were a distraction."

"But there wasn't a wound by his kidneys," I say, confused.

"There was," Sherlock replies. "They'd closed it with glue so the seam was nearly invisible, which argues that the person who'd done it had some medical training."

"And the address you gave Lestrade?"

"Homeless network reported some things that suddenly added up."

"Ah," I say. He falls silent and the city scrolls past the window of the cab. I study my hands again, the dual memories of the boy's blood and Sherlock's fingers playing in my head.

"Have you hurt your hands?" Sherlock asks. The solicitousness surprises me.

"No," I reply, curling my fingers in and tucking them resolutely under my folded arms.

"You had another nightmare last night," Sherlock says after a few moments of silence.

"It happens," I say, shrugging.

"So you've said before," he says, and I realise I've given him the same reply I'd given when I'd woken up the night before last.

"And?" I ask, bracing for more questions.

"I just wanted to know," he replies, and settles back into the seat of the cab.

It's delivery Chinese and more television that night, both of us settled on the sofa with our laptops. I'm trying to write up a blog entry and he's doing...something. It appears to involve looking at autopsy photos. I don't ask, and don't look.

"I meant what I said last night," he says, breaking the silence. I jump. I'd been staring at my blog, watching the blinking cursor mock me.

"Which part?" I ask, scrambling to try to get some context.

"You don't fall under the 'not my area' thing," he says.

Oh. That part. I'd begun to wonder if I'd dreamed that part.

He shuts his laptop and places it under the sofa, out of harm's way. I look over at him, and he's suddenly in my space, close enough that I can feel his exhale on my cheek.

"Is this okay?" he asks, voice low.

"Yeah," I reply, and then his lips meet mine. He's gentle, which surprises me, and the kiss is almost chaste. Almost.

"Is this what you want?" he asks when we part.

I close my own laptop, not bothering to power it down properly, and set it aside. "Yes," I reply. He leans forward again, and I put a hand on his chest, stopping him but not pushing him away. "Are you sure this is what you want? This isn't an experiment, or some kind of test?"

"Yes, I'm sure, and no, this isn't," he says.

I knot my fingers into his shirt and pull him forward. He gasps a bit in surprise, but lets me, and I tilt my head to allow for the height difference. Our kiss this time is heated, less tentative. I feel his tongue trace my bottom lip and I part my lips, allowing him access.

He tastes like salt and beef, remnants of his takeaway, but there's something underneath that's uniquely him. He shifts on the couch so we're sitting closer, facing each other more, and winds the fingers of his right hand into my hair, stroking it gently.

He kisses like he observes: comprehensively, and then the minor details. Broad movements turn into smaller ones, tracing my top lip, a small hint of teeth on the bottom one, tickling my tongue with his. His mouth is slightly cooler than my own, which surprises me, a small detail I file away for later. I'm learning him as he's learning me, a thought that almost makes me smile. My right hand threads into his hair, traces the shell of his ear and the trails down the sensitive skin just behind it. He shudders and grunts in surprise, and I do smile then.

"You are surprising," he says, pulling away just enough to speak. I cup one hand around his jaw. I trail my fingers down that spot again, and he smiles, a genuinely happy look that I'd never seen before. He cups my jaw and kisses me again, gently, just a soft brush of lips. It's _tender_, a word I never thought I would be able to apply to Sherlock Holmes.

"I do try," I reply, just a bit breathless, and then I yawn involuntarily. The lack of sleep from the night before last, the late night last night, and the early morning this morning are hitting me all at once.

"Let's go to bed," he says, pulling me up and leading me to his room.

I wonder, as we're going to his room, if this is going to go any farther tonight. I decide to follow his lead, and climb into bed beside him.


	3. The Best I Can Expect

With Sherlock in bed, everything is slow, languid. I had expected him to be all frantic energy and impatience, like he is most of the time. But he's drawn-out touches and low groans as I explore his bared skin with my fingertips, my tongue. My left hand slides over his cock and he arches into the touch with a satisfied moan. I smile.

So does he, after.

It's the best night of sleep I've had in weeks.

The nightmares abate after that, although I do have a nasty one just after the case with the Chinese smuggling ring. I fall asleep with Sherlock's arm across my chest and his leg across my legs and wake some time later, panicking, unable to move, and nearly throw him from the bed. He sits up, watching me standing next to the bed as I try to get my breathing back under control. He doesn't ask if I'm okay (and I'm thankful for that, because I'm clearly not), but he does stand up slowly, telegraphing his movements as he walks around the bed to me. He stops an arm's length from me and holds out his hand. And waits.

He's done this before, when a nightmare has caused me to leave the bed for one reason or another. He'll come toward me, stop a safe distance away, and just wait for me to come to him. I don't know where he learned to do that, if it's something he thought of on his own or something he read in a psychology journal (I'd found one on his desk, open to a page about nightmares and night terrors). He always waits, always gives me the choice to back away or go to him.

I walk to him and lay my head on his chest as he wraps his arms around me, my own arms wrapped firmly around my own stomach and trapped between us. The images of the nightmare are already fading.

Not long after that, though, came the pink phone, and sleep was scarce for a few days.

And then the pool.

I leave to go to Sarah's for tea, leaving Sherlock to watch crap telly and get the milk. I get maybe three blocks before someone grabs me from behind.

I struggle, but there are three of them, all larger and stronger than me. I manage to break one bloke's nose before the cold barrel of a gun is jabbed into my neck. I freeze immediately. They shove me into a vehicle (I think it's some kind of delivery van) and manhandle me into a strange harness and a coat before jamming an earpiece into my ear.

"That's Semtex under that coat, Johnny boy," a voice says into my ear and I go very, very still. "I'm sure you know what that is. Now, unless you want to experience first-hand what it's like to be that close to that much explosive material, I suggest you do _exactly _as I tell you."

The voice continues to talk to me, enumerating instructions and telling me exactly what's going to happen. I'm not to speak unless directly told. I'm not to move unless directly told. On and on.

I lose track of time as I'm driven around, but we stop abruptly and they lead me into a building that smells like wet concrete and chlorine and shove me in a curtained cubicle and told to wait. So I wait.

Jim from IT turns out to be Jim Moriarty and also a_ complete fucking lunatic_.

Mycroft arrives ten minutes after Moriarty leaves and accompanies us back to 221B (after I fish the memory stick out of the pool).

I leave the brothers arguing in the front room to retreat up the stairs to my own room. I close and lock the door behind me before I sink down to the floor, back braced against the wall, and put my head between my knees. I'd managed to keep it together at the pool and in the cab, but the adrenaline is fading and the horror of what had happened (gun against my throat, kidnapped, held hostage, wrapped in explosives, forced to be a puppet) is rising in my brain in a tide I can't fight.

This used to happen to me in Afghanistan. I'd go out on a mission, be completely calm through it. Surgeries too. Everything was clear, sharp, even when everything was going to hell. It was only afterwards, when I was safe and quiet, that reality set in and I panicked.

A soft tap on my door pulls me back.

"John?" Sherlock calls through the door. "Are you alright?"

"Go away," I say, my voice a croak from the tightly reined in terror.

"John," Sherlock says again.

"No," I say, and it's both an answer and a reprimand.

"Tell me what you need," he says. "I don't know how this works, John. Nightmares I understand. This is different." A pause, and then a soft sound like a deep inhale. "Please."

"I'll be out later," I say finally. He'd said please. He never says please. "Just let me be, all right?" It pains me to send him away, but I can't be around anyone right now. I need to calm down first. He doesn't reply.

Eventually, the shaking does subside and I lever myself off of the floor. I change my clothes, leaving the ones I had been wearing in a pile on the floor. I stare at them for a bit, debating whether to clean them or find a way to burn them. Sherlock probably has some corrosive chemicals I can use.

The flat is quiet when I open my door. Sherlock is on his laptop (his own for once) on the couch. He doesn't look up when I walk into the room.

The flat looks exactly the same as it had when I left. The windows are still blown out. Debris is still everywhere. It felt like it should have changed, somehow, like I had been gone longer than a few hours.

I wander into the kitchen and open the fridge. I ignore the head and glance through the contents. They're the same as they had been a few hours before as well. Damn.

"I didn't get the milk," Sherlock says from his seat on the couch.

"Yeah, I noticed," I reply. "Don't really blame you, though."

"I had planned to get some on the way back from the meeting," he says as I'm filling the kettle. I almost don't hear him over the water, but when his words sink in it's all I can do to not slam the kettle on the counter. I put it carefully in its base and brace myself on the counter.

"You planned that?" I ask, voice steady. I don't look at him.

"Not _that _specifically," Sherlock replies.

"But you arranged to meet with him?" I say, turning to look at him. He's still looking at the laptop.

"Yes. How was I to know that he'd involve you?"

"For someone who's so intelligent, you really are an idiot, you know that?" I say. He finally looks up at me. "You could have told me."

"You would have tried to stopped me."

"Damn right I would have tried," I say, turning the kettle on without looking. "Or at least I could have gone with you."

"You would have?" he asks, confused, finally looking up at me.

"You daft git," I say. "I shot someone for you the night after we met, do you really think I wouldn't have come with you to meet the maniac?"

"You're angry that I didn't tell you," he says, but it's half a question.

"No, and you just made a guess. Don't deny it, you did," I say, cutting off his token objection. "I'm angry that you went alone." I turn the kettle off and pour two mugs, dropping a tea bag in each of them. "I'm angry that you didn't even give me the chance to tell you no. You just assumed."

"You would have said no. People normally say no to these types of things."

"Do I react to you the way normal people do?" I ask, and he actually pauses. "Exactly." I pull the teabags out, toss them in the bin, and then take Sherlock his mug. I sit down beside him. "Don't do it again."

"I will do my best," he replies, and I take that for the answer it is and nothing more. He'll try. That's about all I can ask for.

That night, though, Sherlock falls asleep with his head tucked under my chin.

_The world is close, too close. It's normally echoingly vast, but now there is concrete instead of sand, a roof instead of stars. Everything smells wrong, not like vegetation or sand or exhaust or gunpowder or blood, but instead there's fear (there's always fear, fear has a smell, it's sharp and brittle and malevolent) and there's sweat and there's chlorine._

_I'm wrapped in something that's slowly pulling me down there's water nearby it's trying to drag me to the water. A voice murmurs in my ear, alternately low and smooth and then loud and brash. It directs my movements, and I have to obey the voice or the thing I'm wrapped in will pull me in the water and then I'll drown or die or dissolve. _

_"John," it says, pitched lower than usual. "John you have to wake up." Only I can't obey that order because I'm already awake and so I'm dragged toward the water, inexorably forward, and there's dancing red dots on my chest (I know they're sniper rifle sights, I know that like I know the water's going to kill me) and they ensure that I'm not going to fight because I'll die one way or the other. "John," the voice says again in my ear._"John," it says, and I flail, twisting, my hand connecting with something solid before I slip off of the bed and onto the floor with a thud.

It's dark. A hand lands on my shoulder and I flinch back. It removes itself and a light comes on, blinding in the darkness. Sherlock's room, Sherlock's floor, the underside of Sherlock's bed (there's the sock I lost last week).

"John," he says, looking down at me. There's a red mark across his right cheekbone.

"What?" I ask. My breathing is slowing, everything's coming back into focus.

He disappears and then I hear footsteps come around to my side of the bed. He offers me his hand. I take it to pull myself to my feet.

"Oh, Christ, Sherlock, I'm sorry," I say when I see the red mark on his cheek.

"It's fine," he says. "You didn't mean it." I know that, and I know he knows it, but it still makes me feel guilty. I run my fingers across the mark, but he doesn't even wince. It'll be a bruise in a couple of hours.

"Better put some ice on it," I say.

"John, it's fine," he says again, gently pulling my hand away from his face, interlacing our fingers. "Are you coming to bed?"

I glance at the clock. It's half four, not quite late enough to sleep but still too early to be up. Sherlock's watching me, and he lifts our twined hands and trails kisses across my knuckles. The gesture makes me smile. I tug his hand down and kiss him properly.

"You'll tell me next time you go to meet a psychopath, won't you?" I ask between kisses.

"I'll do my best," he replies, repeating his words from earlier.

It's still the best answer I can hope for.


	4. Sentiment

Sherlock keeps Irene Adler's phone. I'm not sure what to make of that. I find it in a drawer as I'm searching for a file two or three days after my impromptu meeting with Mycroft, but I leave it there.

Sherlock's mind works in ways I'll never understand. I've studied the brain, the neural pathways and the connections between the cerebellum and the cerebrum and the spinal cord and the body and everything that's encased therein, but Sherlock's neural labyrinth cannot be mapped by anyone but him. He keeps Irene's phone but he never acknowledges it, never takes it out, at least as far as I can tell. When she does come up, she's "The Woman," as though just mentioning her name would conjure her back from the dead.

One night, I wake up very suddenly, but I can't figure out why. I haven't had a nightmare, there hadn't been any loud noises, and no one had rung the bell (the number of times it had rung in the middle of the night had almost prompted me to disable it again, but the thought of Mrs. Hudson's wrath was scarier than having to get up at two in the morning). I'm in Sherlock's bed, and he's curled on his side with his back to me.

"You need to run," he says, clear as a bell, voice hard and just slightly frantic. I sit up, panicked, staring at the empty bedroom. I look at him, confused.

"Run," he says again, and then it dawns on me.

He's _dreaming_.

"Sherlock," I say. He doesn't stir. I tentatively place a hand on his shoulder and squeeze. He tenses and gasps, but that's all he does. "You wake up quieter than me, at least."

"John," he says, his voice rough with sleep. He turns over, looks up at me. "What?"

"You were dreaming," I reply, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. It's damp with sweat.

"So why'd you wake me up?" he asks, sounding grumpy.

"You were telling someone to run," I reply, and he freezes. "I thought you might welcome the interruption." I resolutely do not ask who he was talking to. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out. I keep stroking his hair, running my fingers through the curls the way he had done for me that first night we slept here. He studies my face, leaning into the hand stroking his hair.

"You're being sentimental," he says finally. His tone is accusing.

"Never mistake sentiment for weakness," I reply. He looks at me, surprised. I expect him to come back with a cutting remark, but instead he pulls me down and kisses me.

There's something desperate in the kiss. His hands hold on just a bit too tightly, his tongue just slightly too insistent. I allow him to roll me over so he's on top of me, pinning me down. He runs his hands over my hair, my chest, my stomach and arms and anywhere else he can reach.

"What do you want?" I ask as his mouth moves down my jaw, trailing kisses to my neck. "Tell me what you want, Sherlock."

He lifts his head to look at me, his hands cradling my face. "I had been caught and you wouldn't run," he said, his voice very nearly a whisper, his eyes suddenly unfocused with the memory. I reach up and run my hand up and down his back, rubbing circles against his shirt. "I told you to run, and you wouldn't leave me."

"Never leave a man behind," I reply softly, and his gaze sharpens. I'd thought I'd gotten used to the way he seems to look straight through my skull and into my brain to read it like a book, but being this close to those eyes is something else entirely. "I wouldn't leave you behind."

And suddenly, he's kissing me again, and there are insistent fingers tugging at the hem of my shirt. I push him back so we can sit up, although it means losing the contact, and he tugs my shirt over my head as I pull on the hem of his. He stops touching me just long enough for me to pull his shirt off.

He pushes me back down, presses our hips together, and we both groan at the contact.

He makes a frustrated noise and I lift my hips up enough for him to pull off my pants. He quickly dispenses with his own and slides one hand down to stroke both of us at the same time. I push up into his hand. He shifts, finding a rhythm that's fast and relentless and somehow just as desperate as his kisses had been earlier.

I arch up as the pleasure starts pooling low and hot. His face is buried in my neck, kissing and sucking there, finding that spot just below my ear that makes me gasp.

"Come on, John," he says, his breath in my ear making me shiver and groan. We're both so close to the edge, and it's one...two..._three_...

After we'd both cleaned up and are lying on the bed again, he says, "I went to meet Mycroft without you. She showed up. I know I'd said I'd try to tell you when I was going to meet a psychopath..."

"She wasn't a psychopath," I interrupt. "She was greedy and scared. There's a difference."

"She worked for Moriarty," he says. "That phone of hers with all the secrets, she went to him to make a profit off of them. In return, he wanted her to undermine me. She claims he didn't want anything in return for advice on how to manipulate me."

"He knew that she'd do it anyway," I reply, realising. "He knew she'd do her best to find a way to make a fool out of you and Mycroft and all he'd have to do would be to sit back and watch the show."

"So it seems," he says. I wait for him to reply, but he seems to be waiting for something himself.

"I'm not angry," I say, and he sighs quietly. I could almost think it was relief. A yawn escapes me, and I looked over at the clock. Half three. "It's time to sleep."

Sherlock tugs me close, tucking an arm around my waist. "She's not dead," he whispers to me. "She's not in witness protection in America."

"What?"

"She was caught by a terrorist group," he says, and I'm so shocked I can't even begin to ask how he knows about the conversation I'd had with Mycroft. "I rescued her, helped her get to freedom, and left her at an airport in Berlin." He paused. "I know why you lied to me, and I'm not angry."

"So you just _let _me lie to you?" I ask.

"I did," he replies. "It made you feel better, and I knew the truth, anyway, which is actually closer to the lie you told me than to what Mycroft believes happened. But it doesn't matter now, it's done." I feel a light pressure on the top of my head, like he's pressed a kiss to my hair. "Go to sleep, John."

The next morning, Henry Knight is in our sitting room, telling us a story about the gigantic hound that killed his father.


	5. Is It So Hard to Believe?

_It's dark in the lab and my eyes won't focus. _My ears are ringing from the noise_ and there are dots dancing in front of my eyes._ I'm struggling to see, to take stock of my surroundings, _to try to figure out what's going on_. And then something cuts through the ringing. Reality's sliding sideways, and I don't know why.

_There's snarling behind me and oh god it's the hound, the hound that terrified Sherlock on the moor last night. I need to hide need to find shelter need to get away._

I see the empty cages and sprint for one of them, pulling the door closed behind me.

_I hear a low growl, and my hands_ _shake _as I pull out my phone, dialing, praying the call goes through. I put a hand over my mouth to muffle my breathing_ because_ _I can't give away my position, I can't let him (it) (them) know where I am because he (it) (they) will find me and kill me or worse. There's no answer, but my phone rings almost immediately, loud in the dark, and I try to tell Sherlock that the thing (the people) (the person) (the creature, it's a creature, oh god it's huge and red-eyed and glowing and things shouldn't uglow/u, not like that...)_

The lights come on, blinding me, and Sherlock's there, saying something about how it's okay (_no it's not, it's not okay, it can't be okay, there's a glowing hound out there he saw it didn't he_) and then he says we've all been drugged.

Wait, what?

I latch onto that, using that discovery to ground myself and rein in my terror. Being drugged explains everything and it doesn't involve cloning. Or giant glowing dogs with red eyes. Somehow it's reassuring. I think. I decide to blame my logic for that on the drugs.

Fear and stimulus, it turns out. A drug that makes nightmares real, or influences nightmares in the waking world. There really isn't much difference. H.O.U.N.D., an acronym that someone had the bright idea to turn into a real monster.

I do feel a little bad about shooting the dog. I feel worse for Henry, though. I give him the name of the therapist I had been seeing before I met Sherlock, just in case his current one decides that she can't deal with a patient who once shot at her during the course of one of his episodes.

Somewhere around three in the morning, I realise I'm probably going to be awake all night. Sherlock's asleep beside me. I'm staring at the ceiling, trying to will myself to sleep, but I'm terrified of what the drugs will do to me while I sleep, what they'll show me. I want to wake Sherlock and ask him how long the effects of the drugs will linger, but I can't bring myself to do it for some reason. He's had just as long of a trip as I have, and I could tell whatever had happened to him in the Hollow, whatever the drug had made him see, had shaken him down to his core.

My phone vibrates quietly, just a single buzz, signalling a text.

Are you awake?-GL

CAN'T SLEEP

Me either. I'm downstairs.-GL

BE DOWN IN A FEW MINUTES

I slide out of bed and pull a jumper on against the chill. I fumble for my socks, but they're nowhere to be found, so I give up and leave, shutting the door silently behind me.

"Glad I'm not the only one who couldn't sleep after that madness out there," Greg says as I come into the front room, the floorboards creaking and cold under my bare feet.

"I'm not sure I want to sleep tonight," I admit, taking the chair across from Greg. We both stare at the fireplace, the fire long since banked for the night.

"You're both mad," Greg says finally, surprising a chuckle out of me. "Seriously, the pair of you, you're each as bad as the other. Youat least could have told me what was going on."

"Like Sherlock ever tells anyone what he's planning," I reply, going for joking and missing by a mile. I can hear it myself, and Greg catches it.

"Still haven't broken him of that, huh?" he asks.

"I've tried," I say wearily. "God knows I've tried. I've been trying for months. I thought...I thought I'd gotten him to trust me after the pool. I just want him to trust me, to trust someone besides himself. He won't talk to his brother and everyone else he pushes away."

"He's been this way for as long as I've known him," Greg replies, his voice kind.

"I just want him to tell me things. I don't want to change him."

"You might be the first person I've ever heard say that about him," Greg says.

I look down at the floor. "I love him, Greg, I do."

"Wait," he says, and I listen hard for the judgement in his voice, but there isn't any. "You two are actually...what? A couple? Boyfriends?"

"We've never really nailed that part down," I reply. "But yes."

There's a moment of silence, and then Greg says, "Well, that means I owe Mycroft five quid." I look up at him, surprised. "That's good, John. Really."

At breakfast the next day, I realise that one of the few nice gestures Sherlock has done for me in public turned out to be what he had thought was a lab experiment. I feel like I should be angry about it, but I'm too tired to care. And it's something I really shouldn't be surprised about, anyway, not from him.

We're halfway back to London when he suddenly says, "All right, I was wrong about the sugar. Stop gloating."

"It made just as much sense as anything else we came across on this case," I reply, fighting back a smile. "So you made a mistake, Sherlock. You're human." He mutters something unintelligible and I smile out out of the window, carefully turning away so he can't see me.

Back at our flat, we both drop our things. I'm really not mad at him about the lab incident. It wasn't the ideal thing, but I should know by now how he works.

Somewhere in the past twenty-four hours, I'd realised that Sherlock was like a magnet, or the center of a whirlwind. Everything spun around him, creating chaos and order in equal measures. Or rather, he made order out of the chaos by pulling things into his own field of influence. He can walk into a room and pull a coherent story out of the tiniest pieces of information.

"You should sleep," Sherlock says, startling me, and I realised I'd been staring out of the window at the rain sheeting down outside.

"It's not even dinner time," I reply, checking my watch.

"You didn't sleep last night," he says.

"How do you know? You were dead to the world."

"The only mornings you're ever up before me are the ones where you've had a nightmare and slept badly or the ones where you haven't slept at all. And your nightmares always wake me up, so you didn't sleep," he says. "I also heard you and Greg talking last night."

"He texted me and asked if I was awake," I reply, turning away from the window. "Wait, we were downstairs, how did you hear us?"

"I followed you to make sure you were all right."

I stare at him, completely shocked.

"Is it so hard to believe that I would be concerned? We'd been drugged, all of us. And then you shot the dog in the hollow where we were drugged again and then the explosion killed Dr. Frankland," he says. He stops, inhales, and looks straight at me. "I was worried about you. I wasn't sure what affects the drugs would have on you in your sleep."

"I told Greg about us," I say, looking down at my feet, too tired to process anything else. I file it away to deal with later. "I hope you don't mind."

"Why would I?" he asks. The lack of derision in his tone surprises me, and I look up. "It doesn't matter, John. It's all fine. Now, go to bed." He strokes my cheek with his thumb before he kisses my forehead. "I'll be there when you wake up."


	6. The Space Between Breaths

Inhale. Exhale.

I had forgotten (because I had known, had realised, in those days before Sherlock) how loud my own breathing could be in a silent room.

Two days after it happens, I catch a newspaper headline out of the corner of my eye. "THE REICHENBACH FALLS" it proclaims over a picture of Sherlock in the deerstalker. It feels like a punch in the stomach, deep like a knife in my ribs, and I can't catch my breath. I keep walking, past the store that was originally my destination and back to Baker Street.

There are reporters camped on my doorstep, cameras at the ready. Mrs Hudson ignores them, going about her business as usual. I don't go out much, not after seeing that headline. They've won, the battlefield has been lost. The ambiguous they, the criminals, the jealous, the ones who can't see, they've won.

Some days it's all I can do to remind myself keep breathing. I jerk out of dazes to find myself staring at nothing and gasping as I suddenly realise there's not enough air in my lungs. I inhale, trying to bring the oxygen back into my body, into my bloodstream, to fuel the cells to get me moving again.

Molly drops in but doesn't stay very long. What do we have to say to each other, really? Mike invites me out for a pint. Mrs Hudson brings cups of tea that I don't drink, which sit there until she sweeps them away again in a wave of forced cheer.

Inhale. Exhale.

Just keep breathing.

Greg comes by one night and we have a few beers as he tells me about the inquiry that has been opened at the Yard. They're looking at all of the cases, and even though everything they're finding is rock solid, it's going to take a long time to sort everything out. The next week he comes by again, this time with takeaway and more beer. He sleeps on my couch that night but is gone the next morning when I force myself out of bed. It becomes a pattern with us, every week he comes by and we drink and talk. Some weeks are better than others. I start working again, something to get out of the house. Sarah's sympathetic but distant.

The thoughts run around and around. I really should have known something was wrong when Sherlock refused to go see if Mrs Hudson was all right. I vividly remembered what he'd done to the CIA agent who'd put a gun to her head, but his refusal to go see her suddenly made sense when I saw Mrs Hudson standing in the foyer with a repairman.

I'm not ashamed of what I say at his grave, but I do mean it when I tell Mrs Hudson that I'm angry. I'm angry he didn't come to me, that he didn't allow me to be there with him.

He'd gone out on his own. I'd tried to make him promise that he wouldn't go after Moriarty alone. I'd tried to make him swear, months ago, after the kidnapping and the meeting at pool, but he hadn't. If he'd given his word, he wouldn't have sent me away. I should have known. I shouldn't have left. I keep running through scenarios in my head, what I could have done differently that might have changed what happened. Around and around and around, the same thoughts, a million ways that it could have ended differently.

Hindsight is 20/20, my father always said.

I wake up in the front room most mornings, not realising I'd fallen asleep, the telly still on, blaring whatever nonsense from whatever station I'd left it on. The nightmares don't bother me now. They're just something that happens. I untangle myself from the blankets on the floor or on the couch if I've managed to stay on it and go about my day.

Years before I went to Afghanistan, I'd figured out that nightmares aren't nightmares because of the violence or the blood or the danger. They're nightmares because of how they feel. They're the way the subconscious deals with the things the waking mind cannot face. I didn't need Sherlock's psychology journals to tell me that.

_There is no gunfire that cuts across the night, no cloying smell of chlorine, no stink of fear wrapped in claustrophobic wet concrete. There is no screaming, just silence, the cloudy sky mocking me with its vastness. Ghosts of buildings rise around me as I run, always moving too slowly, never ever fast enough. My footfalls slap echoslap echoslap echo strangely. I don't know if I'm running to something or away from something, but I keep going, have to keep going, inhale, exhale, inhale exhale inhaleexhale._

_Someone. Not something, someone. I'm running to someone. _

_There was someone, someone I had to talk to or listen to or comfort or touch or kiss. But they're-he's-not there, not anymore. I don't know where to find him, or how, or why I'm trying to get to him other than the fact that I don't know where he is and it's killing me, tearing me apart, stripping me down in ways I'd never imagined. It hurts so much I can hardly breathe, the space between breaths takes an eternity, but I keep going because if I go fast enough I can save him, can stop whatever's going to happen, can keep him safe (whole, intact, healthy, alive). Inhale exhale. Inhale exhale. Inhale._

_I run through the grey rain and past the grey buildings and under the grey sky across the grey pavement. I'm panting, I can't catch my breath, exhale, I've been running for too long, inhale, I haven't run this long since the Army, and my leg is starting to throb. Exhale. Inhale. _

_My footsteps slow (exhale. Inhale. Exhale.), the pavement and the sky and the buildings all fading and smudging into a large grey blur as blood, red and shockingly vibrant against the grey, begins to run on the pavement. Inhale. I'm too late. Exhale. A lorry rumbles _by and I wake, everything quiet and still.

Alone.

Inhale.

* * *

This is the end of the series for now. I may pick this back up once season 3 start airing, but that's a decision I'm going to make once I see what happens. I'm marking this complete for now, but that may change.

Thank you for reading


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